Melancholia

Sometimes on rainy days at the shop it is easy to slip into a state of melancholia. The rain coming down. Elvis Costello singing about diving for pearls. The solitude of the shop. Melancholia takes me gently so I barely notice until I find myself entering the next stage, the one I’ve heard referred to as call morbid reflection. This is when I begin reflecting critically on past decisions, situations I wish I had handled differently, the times I perhaps should’ve said something different.

The difference between nostalgia and melancholia is that nostalgia can be shared. With friends. With family. Even with total strangers. Melancholia is solitary. Nostalgia has potential for light whereas melancholia’s direction is inevitably towards dark and ponderous thoughts.

Today I caught myself in mid descent and had a quick flash of truth that brought me back. The fact is that I have a really great life! I wasn’t working outside in the rain. I was building a cute shelving unit for someone’s kitchen. I wasn’t hungry. I could change the music and no one would complain (The Ramones are antithesis of melancholic music). In that flash of truth was also the realization that I ought to be focusing on the task at hand rather than mulling over things I would never be able to change. I should be focusing my attention on building the best damn cute shelving unit possible! So that’s what I did…

Cutting dados for the aforementioned unit